Two
presidential meetings were held in November in the face of the international
financial collapse and the ominous warning signs it represents for the future
of humanity. The first, convoked by US President George Bush, brought together
the Group of 20, G20, in the NationalConstructionMuseum in Washington. The second meeting,
initiated by Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez,
united the countries that make up the Bolivarian Alternative for the Peoples of
Our America (ALBA), and met in the Ayacucho Salon in MirafloresPalace.

In
the capital of the empire the G20 agreed upon an erratic document lacking any
precise definitions, except the common aim of propping up capitalism and
correcting what different heads of states classified as “excesses resulting
from the lack of regulation”. In Caracas, after diagnoses that
expounded the graveness of the systemic crisis and its structural character,
transcendental economic and political measures were adopted, such as the
creation of a common monetary zone, the decision to put an end to the hegemony
of the US dollar in international trade, and defence of a multipolar world.

If
Bush could boast about having attracted China, Brazil and Argentina to his meeting of
imperialist powers, the ALBA meeting concluded with a dinner where the Russian
head of state dropped by: a clear outline of the new global political map that the
crisis is beginning to draw up.

It
would be over the top to call it the “Ayacucho of the 21st Century”. But the
spirit of Antonio José de Sucre, the victor of the final battle against the
Spanish empire, was present in MirafloresPalace on the morning of
November 26, when the heads of state of Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Dominica, Honduras and Ecuador, accompanied by minimal
committees, began an unusual debate for these types of meetings. So much so
that, seven hours later, following a heated battle of ideas, characterisations
and proposals, the heads of states and governments approved the creation of a
common monetary zone and gave birth to the Sucre,
currency which will act as an instrument for trade, and which moreover is the
name of a new mechanism created: the Unitary System of Regional Compensation. (In Spanish the new mechanism is called Sistema
Unitario de Compensación Regional, which when abbreviated becomes SUCRE.)

The
III Extraordinary Summit of the Bolivarian Alternative for the Peoples of Our
America-Peoples Trade Agreement (ALBA-TCP) was not just one more of the
countless presidential encounters held over the last few years. Not only
because a different climate reigned amongst the participants, removed from
formalities and diplomatic nonsense, but because in line with the features that
characterise them, Hugo Chávez, Ricardo Cabrisas, Evo Morales, Daniel Ortega,
Roosevelt Skerrit, Manuel Zelaya and Rafael Correa sought out and found
responses to the crisis which is shaking the planet from a perspective not only
autonomous, but frankly opposed to that held by the imperial centres.

Siren
without voice but with power

The
true significance of the decisions made at the ALBA meeting become clear when
we take into consideration the presidential encounter in Washington. To classify the meeting
of the G20 as a vain gesture of an outgoing president of the United States is to leave aside its
real strategic objective. The vagueness of the final document is explained by
the obvious impossibility of finding a clear response – much less a common one
– to the capitalist collapse. Nevertheless, it is debateable whether the organisers’
objective had been to emit a proclamation of imperialist principles. The
unusual convocation had another purpose. Due not to the impulse of a unpopular
president lacking power like never before in the history of the United States,
but rather the decision of the strategists in the State Department, who have
their sights set on an objective of a strictly political nature: impede China
and Latin America lining up in the direction of the formation of regional
financial subsystems and entering into the new international scenario opened up
by the crisis with action plans independent of the will and the interests of
the G7 (United States, Germany, Japan, France, Canada, Italy and Britain).

The
siren call of the US dollar no longer has the capacity to enrapture the marines
that accompany Ulysses in the stormy sea of the disordered financial system. Nevertheless,
it has a sufficient gravitational pull for some helmsmen to divert their boats
from the path to Itaca in order to redirect themselves towards the mortal reefs
surrounding the White House. The real balance of the G20 Summit consists of the
fact that China, Brazil and Argentina took up Bush’s invitation (the rest of
the countries in the group, above all India, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia
and South Korea, for the moment do not see the danger of moving out of the
orbit of Washington).

In
some ways, the result of the encounter was conclusive regarding what the State
Department was seeking. China is conditioned by the
very grave effects of the world recession on its economy and threatened like
nobody else by the eventual final collapse of the dollar. It is unlikely that
the photo of Hu Jintao standing alongside Bush will guarantee that Beijing and Washington will walk side by side
in the period to come. The same goes for Brazil, whose economy suffers
more than any other in South America and faces extreme risks as of 2009.
Brazil’s President Lula smiled
uncomfortably at the support of the wandering ghost that still occupies the
White House. For its part, Argentina, doubly hit by the
detonation of the economic crisis and the political weakening of the government
due to causes of another nature, guarantees everything except firmness behind a
definite path.

Nevertheless,
all this cannot act to obscure the relative success of the imperialist
strategists: looking only at this hemisphere, with the exception of ALBA, none
of the regional bodies have met to take into consideration the issue of the
crisis and design a common response. The Union of South American Nations
(UNASUR), a recent formidable conquest in the direction of South American
convergence, remained mute and paralysed, likewise Mercosur, not to mention the
moribund Community of Andean Nations (CAN). Rather than convoking an urgent
meeting of UNASUR, Brasilia and Buenos Aires went to Washington. Meanwhile, the heads of
state of Peru, Chile and Colombia took refuge at another
summit which Bush attended, APEC (Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation), which met
in Lima.

Reversal of the tendency?

Following eight years in which the centripetal forces in South America have produced a drastic
geopolitical change to the detriment of imperialism in general, and more
specifically the United States, an unknown remains: is
the tendency reversing and will a centrifugal force accentuated by the global
collapse destroy the conquests achieved so far this century?

The
increasing number of clashes for the most diverse reasons between Brazil and
Argentina, Ecuador and Brazil, Uruguay and Argentina, Paraguay and Brazil are
indicative of the multiple gravitational pull of internal and externals forces
that are working to undermine the process of regional union which has
predominated in the last years. As was noted in these pages some time ago,
following the great victory against ALCA (Free Trade of Americas Agreement or
FTAA), an imperialist counter-offensive introduced a number of factors that
pull in the opposite direction of South American convergence. Nevertheless, the
most potent forces of disintegration result from the role played by the
regional bourgeoisies. The competition for markets prevails and the more
powerful the dominant classes of each country are, the more they feed internal
shock troops. With the eruption of the world crisis, these objective forces come
together in order to drag with them governments verbally committed to the Latin
American cause. This is the crossroads at which all will have to make their
choice without further delay.

Weight and measures

Washington continues to act
according to the strategic direction that has guided it over decades: wherever Brazil goes, Latin America will go. That is what is
behind the call for the G20 meeting. That also helps explain the transcendence
of the extraordinary ALBA summit. The economic, geographic and population
weight of Brazil is obvious. With the
passive concourse of Argentina, its weight far
surpasses that of the six countries that make up ALBA (plus Ecuador). But simple arithmetic
does not always get on well with politics, less so with strategy. The internal
reality of Brazil, Argentina, Mexico and Colombia – to only look at those
countries with the largest economic weight – do not play in favour of an
orientation that leads to subordination to the necessities of the imperial
metropolises. It seems that politicians, intellectuals and the media have not
yet understood the magnitude of the crisis that is occurring across the entire
globe. Whether there is a further collapse or not in the immediate future, the
world economy is marching towards a depression without precedent in the history
of capitalism. A volcanic political transformation is blossoming that to
different degrees, but with an even violence, will change the map from Alaska to Patagonia. The traditional
political apparatuses of the dominant classes – without excluding the
Democratic and Republican parties of the United States – will melt into air.
Fascism will be the inevitable outlet of all those tendencies that reject a
perspective based on the necessities of the peoples.

Within
this framework one begins to see the real dimension of the agreements reached
in Caracas by the countries of ALBA. The final
declaration of the summit affirmed the decision of “constructing a monetary
zone that initially includes the country members of ALBA (Dominica will participate with
the status of observer) and the Republic of Ecuador, through the
establishment of a common unit of accounting, Sucre (Unitary System of
Regional Compensation) and a chamber of payment compensation. The creation of
this monetary zone will be accompanied with the establishment of a stabilisation
and reserves fund with contributions from the member countries, aimed at
financing expansive demand policies to confront the crisis and sustain a policy
of investments for the development of complementary economic activities.”

The
heads of state present unanimously approved the decision to create “an economic
and monetary zone of ALBA-TCP that protects our countries from the depredation
of transnational capital, foments the development of our economies and
constitutes a space liberated from the inoperative global financial
institutions and the monopoly of the dollar as the currency for trade and
reserves”. They affirmed the decision to “come up with a regional response,
driven by ALBA-TCP, which seeks independence in respect to the global financial
markets, questions the role of the dollar in the region and advances towards a
common currency, the Sucre, and contributes to the
creation of a pluri-polar world”. From its anti-imperialist perspective, moving
in the direction of socialism of the 21st century, ALBA shifted from
word into action, in sharp contrast to the rest of the countries.

In
the middle of December the presidents of South America will once again meet,
this time in Brazil. Nothing definite will
come out of there. It will be one more episode in the struggle to define a
path. Regardless, the destiny of more than one government will be at play
there. And we will see much more clearly what path each one takes at this
historic crossroads for the continent.

[Luis Bilbao is founding editor of America XXI. He is professor of political economy and international politics at TEA,
School of Journalism; fauthor of 16 books, most recently Venezuela in Revolution: the
rebirth of socialism; and currently a central participant in the
construction of the mass United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) and
the Union of South American States (Unasur).]